


A Question of Lust

by JinxedSydney



Series: Admit it to Everyone Else [3]
Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 16:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15777726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JinxedSydney/pseuds/JinxedSydney
Summary: At least one more chapter to this runaway long one-shot. ~ JS





	A Question of Lust

Matt Murdock’s sudden and miraculous resurrection from the dead was met with a polite, stiff-armed hug. Foggy looked about as miserable as she felt. Frank took the news with a grunt and a string of curses. Karen laughed. She’d tasted honesty and it’d drawn the soul out of her. There was nothing but a second-chance friendship between she and Matt, and she wasn’t even sure if it would work out that way.

She rolled her eyes and was deleting the latest “friendly good morning” text, coffee dripping into a cup, when she heard Frank’s key ram into the lock. She pulled down another mug and pinched some pink into her cheeks. At least she was dressed for work already.

The door crashed into the wall after Frank had worked the lock free. He had a pistol on the ready, tucked against the outside of his thigh. Eyes working the room as he advanced into the apartment, Karen stilled at the coffee maker. He cleared her bedroom, checked the locks on the windows, tugging the curtains closed. And when he returned to the living room, he removed the key from the tumbler and closed the door before tucking the gun into the back of his waistband.

“Russo escaped.”

Karen’s hand flipped up and covered her mouth.

“I gotta go,” he said, his left hand flat on the countertop.

“You’re going to find him.” She knew Frank wouldn’t stop until Billy Russo was dead. Even then, Frank may not be satisfied.

“You’re not safe with me.”

Karen opened her mouth to interrupt and was immediately shut down when Frank flagged his hand in the air.

“I don’t need you to argue with me right now, Karen. Please. Madani already has someone on the way here.”

“I have my gun. I don’t need Homeland Security breathing down my neck! It just makes me a bigger target.”

“You don’t know Billy.”

She scoffed. “And you don’t know me if you think that I won’t call Madani and tell her to go to hell.”

Frank tipped his chin to the ceiling and closed his eyes, finger bouncing like a hyper toddler against his jeans. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, redirecting his attention from above to the woman across the counter. 

“I told you before that I cannot let anything happen to you. Why can’t you just listen to me, just this once?” His voice was low, raw. “Please.”

“It will never end for you,” Karen whispered, catching the wobble in her voice.

His barely nodded. “Not until he is dead … until he can’t hurt anyone else.”

“I don’t think so, Frank.” She inhaled, the coffee flooding her senses. “There will always be others.”

Frank glanced to the wall, jaw working underneath his beard, then back to Karen. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“I believe we are who we choose to be. I can’t choose for you. Nobody knows what you want, except for you.” Karen took a shaky breath and plowed forward before her resolve fled from his unwavering gaze. “And I’ve always wanted there to be more for you. Always. And as cliché and ridiculous as it sounds, I wanted to be part of it. Even if it meant I was in danger.”

She’d drifted around the barrier between them when she spoke, toward him. Frank remained fixed, watching her movements, her lips—eyes roving and possessive. Karen brushed her fingers against his on the countertop, imagining the bruises and cuts that would soon litter his face. Would his shave the beard? Trim the hair back up the sides of his head? Her gaze traveled with her thoughts, and body with it, until their hips nearly met.

He smelled like coffee and stale laundry and his chest muscles flexed underneath his shirt when Karen pushed a chunk of curls from his forehead. When she leaned in and kissed him, lips parted and wishing for more, she closed her eyes. Her shoulder curled into his when she felt his hand slide underneath her hair. Fingers that had killed, cradled her head, and his calloused thumb grazed her cheek. Her jaw went slack. Her insides hummed. Frank ended their kiss just after he made a noise in the back of this throat and leaned in for more. He dropped his hand back to his side, like a dead weight.

“I can’t keep you safe.”

“We’ve already had this argument. I’m a big girl and I make my own decisions.” Karen smiled and shook her head a tad. “You can’t keep everyone safe, Frank.”

Nostrils flaring, his trigger finger resumed its staccato. He blinked rapidly. And she knew he was layers deep in thought and planning and leaving, for her sake. It didn’t matter what she said. At all.

“I need to go.” He stepped back with one foot, looking at her. Resolution tightened across his face. Karen watched him mentally cut the invisible string to the “thing;” a tic near his lips, the way his jaw muscles jumped.

“Wait. I can make breakfast before you go.” A lame offer. She didn’t even move toward the fridge. Anything to have him stay a few more minutes.

“No … I …” Frank looked over his shoulder toward the front door. 

“Okay.” It sounded so small and tragic.

When he turned back to face her, his lips pulled apart. And he wanted to speak, she could tell by the way he drew in a breath. But, his nose bunched a little and the moment was gone.

And there was something so final, so absolute in the way he pressed his lips together and brows dropped, that Karen didn’t follow him to the door. She heard the latch click, and it was then that she saw the spare key on the corner of the counter. After all, he was Frank Castle: soldier, husband, father, murderer, the Punisher.

It took hours for her to answer the texts from Ellison. Days to return Foggy’s call. Weeks to remember to buy groceries. And her pattern resumed, like an old friend, visiting day after day: work, shower, eat, sleep.

Endless, echoing loneliness.

When she left the Bulletin and glanced at the panhandlers or scanned the rooftops, it gently blew the ember of hope she kept tucked away. Karen didn’t mind the sad eyes Foggy gave her when they had a beer at Josies. She thought he was more noble than the way Matt tried to insist on walking her home or texting to make sure she was okay, tacking on his endless apologies. There would never be an amount of loneliness that made Matt’s arms plausible.

Just after Thanksgiving, Karen hung up the spare key on its old hook. On a rainy day before Christmas, she dropped the white silk roses into the garbage chute. She didn’t trust herself leaving them in the trash can. And by New Year’s Eve, she couldn’t dodge the feeling that she was giving up on Frank. Or that he had given up on her.

Spring rains washed the gutters in the Kitchen. Karen exposed a child labor ring in the posh high rises of Manhattan. She gutted a false business front for fentanyl sales in Greenwich Village. Ellison celebrated the uptick in sales by presenting her with a small bonus. Karen bought a Beretta .22 Tomcat from someone who knew someone (it would fit into smaller purses).

It was an ordinary summer afternoon when she finally made her way to the benches on the waterfront at Grand Ferry Park. She pulled a plastic container of sushi from her bag and stared at the river while she ate. Her hair was up because she hadn’t made time for a cut (in almost twelve months). A trickle of sweat raced down her neck, despite the breeze.

I will come for you.

Karen lowered her lunch and slowly glanced around. Goosebumps raised the hair on both arms. A mom pushed a double stroller, a group of buttoned-up businessmen waved their hands as they continued on their course. The shadows near the landscaping were empty. Through the rails, the river drifted out to sea. And she found herself miserable, knowing it would takes days and days and days to chase Frank’s ghost away again. Chucking the rest of her meal into the trash bin, she stalked back to the office, chastising herself for dredging up old memories.

On the elevator ride to her office, Karen looked to the ceiling. The tile was loose. She got off two floors below her exit and took the stairs back down. Instead of looking to the shadows and searching, she fired off a text to Ellison that she was taking the afternoon off and hailed a taxi. She sat in the middle of the backseat so that she couldn’t look up to the rooflines back to her apartment.

That was the day she decided to start jogging. Karen’s feet felt like molten lead an hour later, her lungs burned. She researched the best running shoes and bought an entire week’s worth of outfits that were delivered within two days. And a tiny holster that held the Tomcat near her ribs. Come rain or sleet or sunshine, her soles slapped the cement while she dodged trash bags, needles, or kids playing hopscotch. There was a sweet nothingness in the cadence of her stride. Concentration on the path ahead left little time to look anywhere but ahead. It wasn’t perfect, but it held her dark thoughts at bay.

Frank never surfaced. No random dead bodies or unconscious Anvil former employees. Reluctantly, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen became her insider for articles. It was a casual affair of texts or meeting for lunch at a crowded diner, where she could keep her hands out of his reach. He gave her names to follow up on, meeting dates and times to pass along to Sergeant Mahoney. Never once did he slip up and say Frank’s name, but it was obvious they’d met and even worked together.

It was even more apparent when Matt figured out that Karen knew Frank by the way he skirted the details of Frank’s movements.

They were discussing The Hand at a deli. She scribbled notes about the mystical cult-like group, not really understanding the whole world dominance thing. Seemed like the Avengers had that corner of the market handled.

“Karen,” Matt said, shaking pepper onto his chicken salad, “I want us to be friends.”

“We are friends.” She sniffed and took a sip of water, watching as he tracked her movements.

“I mean back to what it was, before all of this stuff happened.” And he smiled a stupid, cute Matthew Murdock lop-sided smile that would’ve curled her toes ages ago.

Karen contemplated her answer as she chewed her sandwich. “Do you mean the part before you kept lying to me about certain things or the before I found Elektra?” She took another draw of water. “Because I’m trying really hard to figure out which one.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you. Or Foggy.”

She tossed her head back with a forced laugh. “Oh, here I was thinking this was about me and you’re making it about you.”

Matt sighed and pushed back against the booth seat.

“Let’s do us both a favor and just keep this on a professional level, Matt. That way you don’t have to remember to tell the truth and I don’t have to remember everything else.”

“I see he rubbed off on you.”

“Excuse me?” Surely, Matt couldn’t be saying what she thought. He’d never push her that far.

Matt didn’t respond. His eyebrows hiked and he stared like a blind man shouldn’t stare.

Karen wiped her mouth with the paper napkin and stood. “I’d rather have Frank Castle’s honesty rub off on me than try and attempt to be polite with a liar and hypocrite.” She clutched her bag, wishing it were her fingers around Matt’s neck.

He was up, holding her by the elbow. “Karen, I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“Please, Karen, I’m sorry. Sit back down. Finish lunch.”

Before she could answer, her phone rang. And Ellison never called.

“Get back to the office now.” He was out of breath and panicked. Matt tilted his head to hear.

“I’m finishing—”

“Right goddammed now, Page.”

She yanked her elbow free. Her feet were in motion and she switched the phone to the opposite ear so she could slide her right hand into her purse, happy to have picked the .380 by the tone of her editor’s voice.

“Talk to me, Mitchell.” Karen heard Matt’s cane tapping the sidewalk behind her as she sped toward The Bulletin.

“There’s been reports of a shooting … hang on.” Ellison covered the mouthpiece and yelled to someone, stringing curses together. “Where are you?”

Karen started to jog. “I’m only a block away.”

“Hurry up.”

“What is happening?”

“You really have no idea?”

Her phone vibrated with another call. She glanced long enough to see Madani’s name. And five text messages from various contacts.

“I was eating lunch.” Karen palmed the grip of the gun, eyes swinging across the sidewalks. Everyone was glued to their phones.

“Frank Castle has been spotted—with Billy Russo.”

Karen stopped so suddenly that Matt plowed into her back and shoved her forward.

“What?”

“There’s an active shooter in Douglaston and the footage is showing, oh Lord …”

She felt Matt rush away, tapping through the citizens crowding the sidewalks. Her feet sped back into a hurried jog. Ellison described Frank’s movements as best as he could, swearing at the cameras to hold still. The elevator was taking too long. She thought her heart would rip out through her rib cage when Ellison gasped and whispered that Frank was down on the street.

“He’s been hit, Karen. He’s down.”

The elevator dinged and she rushed into her office, where Ellison sat at her chair, watching her laptop monitor.

Frank, shaved and hair trimmed, rocked forward onto his feet and dragged himself up, face flinching in pain.

“Please, please, please,” she chanted into the room. Her phone kept buzzing with notifications, so she tossed it onto the desk, eyes never leaving the screen. Ellison clamped onto her left hand with both of his.

They watched as The Punisher rose, blood dripping onto the painted white skull emblazoned across his chest. The person livestreaming ducked behind a brick pillar, panning right. Billy Russo screamed Frank’s name. He raised some massive machine gun, straight out of a mobster movie, and pulled the trigger.

“No!” Karen lurched to the monitor. “Frank!”

“Turn, goddamn it!” Ellison screamed.

The phone whirred from the stack of papers on Karen’s desk.

But the amateur filmmaker focused on Billy, his ruined mouth opened wide, as his body rattled from the gun’s recoil. For an eternity and in a split second, Russo defiantly laid waste to everything before him.

Then his shoulder jerked backward.

His gun faltered.

And the back of his head exploded into an ugly, red mass.

The jerky phone camera finally swung back toward Frank. He was already advancing forward, gun trained where Billy’s body had fallen.

Karen finally let go of her gun. She heard the sirens through the video feed. Madani had a hell of a mess to clean up after this. Karen focused on Frank’s limp.

“Hey!” A man’s voice erupted near the phone still tracking Frank’s hunt. The feed bounced and jiggled, making the video a blur of colored motion. “Give me back my phone!”

Blackness interrupted the feed before the message blipped onto the laptop: 

Connection lost.

Her phone vibrated over and over and over again.

**Author's Note:**

> At least one more chapter to this runaway long one-shot. ~ JS


End file.
